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Number 



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Seventeen, 



JOSEPH ADDISON 



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BY 



DANIEL AVISE. D.D. 



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NEW YORK: 
PHILLIPS & HUNT 

CINCINNATI: 

W A L D E N & STOWE 

1883. 



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The " Home CoLLE&e Series" will contain one hundred short papers on 
a wide range of subjects — biographical; historical, scientific, literary, domes- 
tic, political, and religious. Indeed, the religious tone will characterize all 
of them. They are written for every body — for all whose leisure is limited, 
but who desire to use the minutes for the enrichment of life. 

These papers contain seeds from the best gardens in all the world of 
human knowledge, and if dropped wisely into good soil, will bring forth 
harvests of beauty and value. 

They are for the young — especially for young people (and older people, 
too) who are out of the schools, who are full of "business" and "cares," 
who are in danger of reading nothing, or of reading a sensational literature 
that is worse than nothing. 

One of these papers a week read over and over, thought and talked about 
at "odd times," will give in one year a vast fund of information, an intel- 
lectual quickening, worth even more than the mere knowledge acquired, a 
taste for soUd reading, many hours of simple and wholesome pleasure, and 
ability to talk intelligently and helpfully to one's friends. 

Pastors may organize " Home College " classes, or " Lyceum Reading 
Unions," or "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circles," and help the 
young peopte to read and think and talk and live to worthier purposfe. 

A young man may have his own little "college " all by himself, read this 
aeries of tracts one after the other, (there will soon be one hundred of them 
ready,) examine himself on them by the " Thought-Outline to Help the Mem- 
ory," and thus gain knowledge, and, what is better, a love of knowledge. 

And what a young man may do in this respect, a young woman, and both 

old men and old women, may do. 

J. H. Vincent. 
New York, Jan., 18S3. 



Copyright, 1S88, by Phillips & Himi, New York. 



lomt ColUge Strics. |tumfor StiwittRn. 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 



Joseph Addison was born May 1, 1672, at Milston, En- 
gland, a pleasant little village of which his father was reel or. 
His extreme weakness at birth gave so little promise of con- 
tinued life that the good rector thought it best to christen 
him on the day he was born. Of his child-life next to 
nothing is known. But his father, being a learned, pious, 
and conscientious man, is justly presumed to have trained 
him carefully, watched over the first unfoldings of his intel- 
lect, and impressed him with those religious sentiments 
which so largel)^ influenced his character and career. 

When master Joseph was twelve years old his father was 
made Dean of Lichfield, and, removing thither with his 
family, placed his promising boy in the Lichfield Grammar 
School. His school-life is shrouded with the same mist as 
his childhood's years. Johnson indeed tells a story of his 
leadership in barring out the master of his school. This 
mutinous method of defying a teacher by the boys taking 
possession of their schoolroom and so barring the doors as to 
exclude him until he consented to rescind some offensive 
rule or grant some favor, was not uncommon in those old 
times. But, although Johnson believed the story of Addi- 
son's participation in such an affair, Macaulay and other 
good authorities regard it as apocryphal, because of its im- 
probability. In his after life Addison was noted for a mod- 
esty and gentleness utterly out of keeping with the suppo.«»i 
tion of his leadership in such a rough, rebellious procedure. 
They also reject another tradition, which described him as 
running away from school, hiding himself in a forest, sleep- 
ing in a hollow tree, and subsisting on wild berries until he 
was found by his anxious friends and taken home. 

From Lichfield he was removed to the Charter Housq 
f ' 



JOSEPH ADBISON. 



School, in London. Such was his aptitude and such his 
diligence in his studies that when only fifteen years old he 
was admitted into Queen's College, Oxford, with a reputa- 
tion for classical attainments and taste such as many a col- 
lege graduate might envy. Nor was his reputation unmer- 
ited., as reputation often is, but it was the natural fruitage 
of his attainments. 

Merit, however modest it may be, rarely remains undis- 
covered by those whom circumstances bring into association 
with its possessor. In Addison's case, accident made his rare 
abilities known to Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalen College 
Some of his Latin verses chanced to fall into that learnei 
gentleman's hands. He was so charmed with their polished 
diction and correct versification that he determined to do 
what he could to serve the promising boy. The result of 
this purpose was to procure Addison's election as a " Demy," 
or foundation scholar, into Magdalen College. By this elec- 
tion the young student enjoyed the benefaction of its founder, 
and was eligible to succeed, in his turn, to one of its vacant 
fellowships. He took the degree of Master of Arts in 1693, 
after which he remained within the walls of Magdalen, as 
one of its fellows, devoting his time with unresting assiduity 
to the study of poetry, especially Latin poetry, and criticisms. 

Macaulay makes it apparent that Addison's classical at- 
tainments were not general, but limited chiefly to the 
Latin poets. He knew comparatively little Greek. With 
Roman historians and moralists he had only a superficial ac- 
quaintance. But with the Latin poets he was thoroughly fa- 
miliar. He was imbued with their spirit and had caught the 
secret of their style. Hence, in the composition of Latin verse 
he was unrivaled. It was his superiority in this department, 
and in the polish of his verses written in English, which first 
attracted the attention of the literary and political leaders of 
society to his great abilities, and led to the openings by which 
he finally attained his high position in society and in political 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 8 

life. Hence he is an illustration of the fact, that the man 
A\ ho usually succeeds, is not, as Macaulay puts it, " the man 
^\\\o does what nobody else ever attempts to do, but the 
}nait y;ho does best what multitudes do well!''* 

When Addison was twenty-seven years old he w^as still 
undecided as to his choice of a profession. His father very 
much desired that he should take orders in the Church of 
England, He seems himself at one time to have regarded 
a clerical life, not as his duty, but as his destiny marked out 
by circumstances. His opinions were orthodox; his life, if 
not spiritual, was moral; his college had rich livings in its 
.^ift; his father had influence in the Church; why, then, 

f should he hesitate ? Among churchmen little w^as thought 
in those times of the need of a divine call to the ministry. 
Hence he had no scruples on that point. With him the 
question was, not what God called him to do, but in which 
profession, literature or the ministry, could he hope to succeed 
best ? Probably his natural shyness disinclined him to at- 
tempt the latter, while the success which followed his first 
poetical publications inclined him to the former. Thus he 
stood in life's great highway, an undecided man, waiting, not 
for Providence, but for human events, to direct his course. 

I While he was in this state of mind two distinguished states- 
men. Lords Montagu and Somers, discerning his possible value 
to the State, desired his services in foreign courts.. To this 
end it was necessary that he should be a thorough master of 
the French language. To enable him to acquire it they 
offered him a pension of $1,500 a year, that he might pass 
sufficient time abroad to prepare himself for official duty. His 
college superiors objected at first; but a letter from Montagu 
to the head of Magdalen College, in which that statesman 
said, by way of apology, " I will never do the Church any 
other injury than the keeping of Mr. Addison out of it," ob- 
tained permission for Addison to retain his fellowship while 
pursuing his diplomatic and other studies abroad. 



J08EPH ADDlSOlSt. 



Accepting this unanticipated opening into political life, 
Addison, giving up all further thought of the ministry, 
quitted the venerable cloisters of his beloved Oxford, and 
went abroad. There he was no idler. Improvement, not 
pleasure, was his aim. Hence he made good and profitable 
use of his opportunity, studying not merely languages and 
ai't, but chiefly men and manners. He gained the acquaintance 
of many men of note; he wrote poems, letters, observations of 
the countries through which he passed, and began, as is sup- 
posed, his well-known tragedy of Cato. But his travels were 
not without their drawbacks. His pension, after the first 
year, was withheld, first, on account of the waning power of his 
patrons and, finally, because the death of King William de- 
prived them of their oflices. Thus the latter part of his stay 
on tlie Continent was made uncomfortable because of the 
pinchings of poverty, and when he returned to England, in 
1V03, his mean apparel bore witness to his pecuniary straits; 
and the political downfall of his patrons had cut off his 
hoi)es of official preferment. His prospects, so brilliant 
when he left England, were now enveloi3ed in an impenetrable 
cloud. Still, he had his fellowship left, and, without yielding 
to discouragement, he again devoted himself to literary pur- 
suits. 

One year after, Lord Marlborough's famous victory at 
Blenheim led Lord Godolphin to request Addison to write a 
poem in honor of that great event. Li the garret of a house 
in the Haymarket the poverty-stricken poet produced a work 
which was 50 satisfactory, both to the existing ministry and 
the public, that he was immediately installed as Commis- 
sioner of Appeals, a place that had been filled by that dis- 
tinguished philosopher, John Locke, then lately deceased. 
This oflice yielded him an annual income of |1,000, and with 
it his patrons gave him assurance that it should be followed 
by the gift of some still more profitable place. 

Addison's official duties did not prevent him from contin- 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 



uing to use his pen, and he soon published a " Narrative 
of Travels in Italy/' a work which did not increase his 
reputation, because it was too exclusively classical in its allu- 
sions to suit the gossipy and corrupt taste of the times. 
After his travels he produced the lively opera of "Rosa- 
mond," which, though it failed on the stage, was highly 
esteemed in print, and therefore contributed to increase his 
literary reputation. 

In 1*705 Addison was appointed Under-Secretary of State. 
Three years after he was elected a member of the House of 
Commons, where his maiden and only speech served no other 
purpose than to convince both himself and his friends that 
he was incapable of serving either his party or his country 
as an orator, on account of his unconquerable diffidence. In 
presence of an audience his mind, so fruitful when it sought 
expression with the pen, or in conversation with a small 
circle of friends, seemed stricken with torpor ; his wit re- 
fused to sparkle, his genial humor to flow, his tongue to coin 
his thoughts into words. Evidently nature had made him a 
writer, not an orator. He yielded to her authority, and never 
tried to make another speech in that House ; albeit, Macau, 
lay thinks there is evidence that during his term of service 
in Ireland he did make several speeches in the Irish House 
of Commons, 

His visit to Ireland was occasioned by his appointment as 
Secretary to the profligate Marquis of Wharton, Lord-lieu- 
tenant of Ireland. To his credit it appears that, while his 
superior spotted his official career with corruption, Addison 
faithfully fulfilled his own duties, and left Ireland not only 
with an untarnished reputation, but also with the respect and 
admiration of the public. 

Addison's secretaryship, with the income of one or two 
sinecure offices Avhich he held, placed him in more than an 
easy financial condition. He was apparently on the road to 
wealth as well as to high political and social condition. 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 



Hence he resigned his fellowship at Magdalen, and probably 
looked forward to years of unbroken prosperity. 

But then, as now, political life resembled an uncertain sea 
which engulfs to-day the proud fleets which yesterday 
floated in seeming security on its treacherous bosom. Thus, 
in 1710, when the caprice of Queen Anne and a sudden 
(•h;jnge in public opinion swept the Whigs out of office, Ad- 
dition found himself no longer a prosperous man in a fat 
place, but simply a politician clinging to the wreck of his 
party. Some unfortunate speculations had robbed him of 
his savings, his fellowship and official post were lost, his po- 
litical hopes blighted, and the haughty Lady Warwick, to 
whom he had at this time begun to pay affectionate atten- 
tions, seeing his forlorn condition, treated his addresses with 
more than coquettish coldness. Nevertheless, he had the 
consciousness of his political integrity and the resources of 
a cultivated mind to sustain him. To friends who commis- 
erated him, he cheerfully replied : 

" You ought to admire my philosophy. I have lost at 
once my place, my fortune, my fellowship, and my mistress. 
I must think of turning tutor again, and yet my spirits are 
as good as ever." 

This, if not a Christian, was certainly a manly spirit. 
The public soon showed its estimate of his character by 
returning him without a contest to his seat in the House, 
elected in consequence of the overthrow of the Whigs. 
Swift, then in London, wrote to Stella, saying, " Addison's 
election has passed easy and undisputed. I believe if he 
had a mind to be king he would hardly be refused." 

Four years now passed, during which Addison was con- 
stantly gaining in popularity both with the public and the 
leaders in literature and politics by his famous essays, of 
which we shall presently write. Then, in 1714, the angel 
of death claimed Queen Anne as his prey, and George I. 
ascended her vacated throne, The queen's departure was 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 



followed by a new election, which restored the Whigs to 
power. Then Addison's political star grew bright again, 
and he was restored to his old office of Chief Secretary un- 
der Lord Sunderland, who was appointed Lord-lieutenant 
of Ireland. 

But in this hour of returning prosperity he put a fact 
into his life, which became like a bitter herb cast into a 
vessel of sweet water. This fact was his marriage \vith the 
Countess - Dowager of Warwick. His acquaintance with 
this handsome widow is said to have begun through his act- 
ing as tutor to her scape-grace son. Macaulay says it was 
commenced by their living in close neighborhood-^she in 
Holland House, and he in a dwelling once occupied hj the 
notorious Nell Gwyn. Meeting first as country neighbors, 
they soon became intimate friends. On Addison's part 
friendship ripened into love, and he became her' piersistent 
wooer. Johnson thinks she treated him disdainfully, and, 
trifled with his affections. When his political hopes were- 
bright she met his advances favorably ; when his prospects, 
darkened, she snubbed him. At last, when he became 
Chief Secretary to Sunderland, and was likely to become, a 
cabinet minister; when he had inherited a fortune from his 
brother; and had bought a country estate, she consented to 
become his bride; but not, as it appears, because she loved 
him, but because of his popularity as a writer, his recent 
good fortune, and his increasing importance in the State. 
Gruff old Samuel Johnson says, she married him "bn terms 
like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused; to whom 
the Sultan is reported to pronounce, ' Daughter, I give thee 
this man for thy slave ! ' The foolish woman was so vain 
of her rank that, though she had taken Addison as her hus- 
band, she persisted in treating him as an inferior. Under 
such circumstances how could either of them be happy ? " 

Shortly after his ill-starred marriage internal divisions in 
the Whig party led our essayist's personal friends to desire 



8 JOSEPH ADDISON. 

his presence in the Cabinet. They pressed him to accept 
the portfolio of the Secretary of State, not because of his 
especial fitness for the office, but because of his reputation 
for probity and his great literary fame. After some hesita- 
tion he "Accepted it, and thus grasped the highest prize of 
his political life. 

For some of the exigencies of this office Addison was nat- 
urally unfitted. He could write admirable State papers, 
but, owing to his unconquerable bashfulness, he could not 
defend either his papers or tho policy of the cabinet in the 
House of Commons. Besides being in this j^articular un- 
equal to his great opportunity he was afflicted with a severe 
asthma. Hence Lady M. W. Montague only echoed the 
expectation of his friends when, in a letter to Pope, she 
wrote of his elevation to the secretaryship : " Such a post 
as that, and such a wife as the countess, do not seem to be 
in prudence eligible for a man that is asthmatic ; and we 
may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign 
them both." 

These words were prophetic, at least so far as his office was 
concerned. His asthma growing worse in the spring of 1718, 
he resigned his portfolio, and retired on a comfortable pen- 
sion of seventy-five hundred dollars a year. Henceforth, he 
devoted his available strength to his more congenial literary 
work. But his uncongenial marriage bond, like his asthma, 
was a burden not to be laid down except with his life. 

We have now traced the steps of this poor clergyman's 
son from the humble rectory, which was his birthplace, to a 
post in the State so honorable that the proudest nobles of 
England have regarded it as Avorthy of their ambition. 
Chatham and Fox, first among Britain's Parliamentary ora- 
tors, never rose higher. But in Addison we see a man with 
no high ancestral connections, with only a small fortune, and 
utterly incapable of public debate, after only nine years of 
service in the House of Commons, put in possession of this 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 



highly esteemed office. His abilities were purely literary. 
Macaulay pronounces his elevation a " seeming miracle," and 
without a parallel in the history of England. He makes its 
causes, however, very obvious by showing that, in Addison's 
time, a superior writer, a lirst-class pamphleteer, was really 
of more importance to party leaders than a fine orator. 
There were no newspapers then, as now, to give the orator's 
words spoken in debate to his constituents and the country. 
Hence the Government and party leaders had to reach the 
people by means of pamphlets, and Addison, having no 
equal as a political writer, except, perhaps, in Swift, neces- 
sarily acquired a political importance which a mere orator 
might envy, but not surpass. This fact, in connection with 
his unspotted reputation for integrity, for fidelity to his 
friends and to his opinions, for humane feeling, and modesty 
of deportment, explains why " he should have climbed high- 
er than any other Englisliman has ever, by means merely of 
literary talents, been able to climb." In a period of very 
general corruption, he was an exceptionally pure politician. 
His influence was the eflftuence of his really great character; 
his power resided in his imperial pen. 

Addison's fame stands, not on his poems, nor his plays, 
nor his political and polemical pamphlets, but on his incom- 
parable essays found mostly in the '' Tatler," the " Specta- 
tor," and the " Guardian." But for these, the world would 
have taken little interest in his productions. And their 
composition was brought about by an accident, trifling in 
itself, but interesting in its consequences. When at the 
Charter House and at Oxford, he had formed a friendly in- 
timacy with Richard Steele, who, on reaching the years of 
manhood, became a good-natured profligate, whose life, says 
Macaulay, " was spent in inculcating what was right and 
doing what was wrong." This man, whose will was too 
weak to combat his passions and to obey the impulses of his 
clear conscience, started a periodical in London which he 



10 JOSEPH ADDISON. 



named the " Tatler," in 1*709. Addison was in Dublin at 
that time with Lord Wharton, and knew nothing of his old 
friend's purpose until he had issued two or three numbers of 
his paper, which professed to be edited by one Isaac Bicker- 
staff, Esq., Astrologer. But Addison at once discovered 
Steele behind the fictitious personage, and immediately sent 
him an essay for its columns, little dreaming that, in doing 
so, he was giving his mind an opportunit^y to develop the 
rare powers of which he was, as yet, the unconscious pos- 
sessor. Steele was no ordinary writer. He had considera- 
ble learning. His wit, humor, and vivacious style of writing, 
though not of the very highest order, were sufficient to com- 
mand the attention of readers in fashionable circles, but 
when Addison's essays appeared in his "Tatler," Steele was 
eclipsed. He was sufficiently a critic to perceive, and good- 
natured enough to confess, his friend's superiority, and to 
say subsequently: 

" I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful 
neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When 
I had once called him in, I could not subsist without depend- 
ence on him. . . . The paper was advanced indeed. It was 
raised to a greater thing, than I intended." 

The "Tatler," after an existence of one year and nine 
months, was brought to a sudden end by the caprice of 
Steele, who acted without consulting Addison. Two months 
later they started the " Spectator " as a daily sheet. Of this 
paper five hundred and fifty-five numbers were printed. It 
was succeeded by the "Guardian," which, in its turn, was 
followed, in June, 1714, by a new series of the "Spectator," 
which, after the issue of eighty numbers, also came to an end. 
Macanlay says of this eighth volume of the " Spectator," 
which was conducted by Addison without Steele's assistance, 
that " it contains jjerhaps the finest essays, both serious and 
playful, in the English language." It did not cease, there- 
fore, through lack of merit, but because the political strifes 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 11 



of the times diverted the attention of the people from the 
claims of polite literature to topics of graver importance. 
^ The charm of Addison's essays must be sought, not in 
their ideas, their style, their humor, or their spirit taken 
separately, but in their happy combination of good thoughts, 

/ a graceful style, delightful humor, and a cheerful spirit. 

I Their thought is neither profound on the one hand, nor su- 
perficial" on the other ; yet fully up to the level of the 
average cultivated understanding; it is always luminous, 
seldom commonplace, and usually instructive. Their style^ 
though not always faultless, is a model of ease and graceful- 
ness, ornamented, but not burdened with, rhetorical adorn- 
ments. It is almost passionless, never enthusiastic, scarcely 
energetic indeed, and yet it is always vivacious and strong. 
The humor of these essays is, perhaps, incomparable in that it 
is, in the main, free from coarseness and vulgarity, entirely un- 
forced, and diffused like the moisture of a dewy morning in 
JBummer. His pages also sparkle with wit which, though it 
ii-arely provokes outright laughter, keeps the reader constantly 
Bmiling at its point. To these qualities is added a genial cheer- 
fulness which keeps the reader good natured, even while he 
.feels compelled to condemn his own follies as they are por- 
Itrayed by his impassive critic. " Whoever wishes," says 
Bamuel Johnson, " to attain an English style, familiar but 
not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his 
days and nights to the volumes of Addison." 

The ethical value of these essays, proper allowance being 
made for the times in which they appeared, must be rated 
high. They are moral satires aiming to make the follies of 
the hour ridiculous and deserving of the censure of common 
sense and conscience. As a satirist, Addison is unrivaled 
in that he is never bitter, never malignant, never scurrilous, 
never personal. He satirizes the vice, not the vicious man. 
Still more to his credit is the fact that he never sports with 
either virtue or religion, but always gives the support of his 



JOSEPH ADDISOm 



pen to both. If his essays do not meet the wants of a re- 
ligious mind, they are, nevertheless, full of the lessons of 
practical wisdom. \ 

As a poet Addison does not rank very high. Warburton 
said, "He was but an ordinary poet and a worse critic;" a 
verdict to Avhich Johnson does not strongly object, and 
which the critics will probably never reverse. He had a 
poet's nature ; his Roger de Coverley proves that he pos- 
sessed creative powers, but he was not endued with the full 
power of poetic expression. 

Johnson, speaking of bim as a poet, says : " His poetry is 
polished and pure, the product of a mind too judicious to 
commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excel- 
lence. He has sometimes a striking line or a shining para- 
graph, but on the whole he is warm rather than fervid, and 
shoAvs more dexterity than strength. He was, however, one 
of our earliest examples of correctness. 

"The versification he had learned of Dryden he debased 
rather than refined. His rhymes are rather dissonant. . . . 
The mere structure of verses seems never to have engaged 
much of his care. But his lines are very smooth in Rosa- 
mond, and too smooth in Cato." 

AVith the demise of the " Spectator " Addison's literary ca- 
reer came to an end. Not that his mind was inactive or his 
pen idle, since he formed the plan of several grave works, and 
wrote numerous papers on the political questions of the hour. 
But these added nothing to his fame. Moreover, although 
repose from the activities of official life gave him temporary 
hope that his asthma was likely to release its hold, yet that 
hope soon proved illusive. His disease not only returned 
in greater severity, but was accompanied with dangerous 
dropsy. He then saw that the curtain was about to fall on 
the drama of his brief but eventful life. Resigning himself 
to the will of the great Supreme, he gave his thoughts to 
preparation for the inevitable. Reviewing his career, his 



JOSEPH ADDISON. 13 



conscience rebuked him for some real or imaginary injury- 
done by him to Gaj', the poet. To relieve his mind he sent 
for Gay to visit his sick room at Holland House, and on his 
arrival solicited his forgiveness. Gay readily granted it, 
since he neither knew, nor could he imagine, what the injury 
was. Addison's biographers think that he had opposed his 
fellow-poet's appointment to some office. If this were it, his 
conscience ought to have approved instead of blaming him, 
seeing that Gay was a parasite of great men and unworthy 
of office. 

Addison had been tutor to Lord Warwick, the son of his 
countess by her first marriage. The young man was ad- 
dicteil to the fashionable vices of the day, and was wearing 
out his life by guilty excesses. Addison, it is said, on what 
some think doubtful authority, sent for the gay young lord 
shortly before his end, but was at first unable to speak to 
him when he arrived. After waiting awhile the young man 
said : 

" Dear sir, you sent for me, I believe. 1 hope you have 
some commands. I shall hold them most sacred." 

Addison rallied sufficiently to press the hand of his step- 
son; and to reply: "See in what peace a Christian can 
die !" 

Not long after, on the 17th of June, 1719, he died in hum- 
ble reliance upon the goodness of God. His remains were 
interred, at midnight, with the noble dead in Westminister 
Abbey. He had lived for little more than forty-seven years. 
His fame will live as long as men are found who have taste 
to relish the beauties of style and the charms of polite liter- 
ature. 

That Addison's character was strongly virtuous there can 
be little serious question. Neither friends nor foes alleged 
aught against his morality, with one sad exception, namely, 
that after his marriage he sought refuge from his marital 
vexations in the wine cup. Drinking was then a universal 



14 Joseph abdtsok 



vice, and, following the general custom, this great essayist 
without doubt drank wine, especially when he visited the cof- 
fee houses to observe men's manners, to gather materials for 
his essays, and to enjoy the conversation of his literary and 
political associates. 

It seems that he was in the habit, when vexed by his 
capricious wife, of going to a coffee-house kept by a man 
named Button, who had been a servant in the establishment 
of the Countess of Warwick. " From thence," says Johnson, 
he went to a tavern where he often sat late, and drank too 
much wine. In the bottle discontent seeks foi- comfort, 
cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for, confidence. It 
is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by 
the manumission he obtained from the servile timidity of 
his sober hours." When in a chosen company of wits, of 
whom his friend Steele was one, and under the inspiration 
of the wine bottle, his conversational powers asserted them- 
selves, despite his bashfulness ; and long after poor Steele 
became stupid, Addison, who was only elevated, not over- 
come, by wine, was the life of the company. How frequent 
these occasions were, and how far he yielded himself to the 
charm of the wine cup is not known, and it is not clearly 
proven that he ever became either a sot or a drunkard. Let 
us, therefore, give him the benefit of the doubt, especially 
as in all other respects his morality was above suspicion, 
though living in an age and among men who did not scruple 
to use falsehood, detraction, trickery, and dishonesty, to pro- 
mote the ends of their selfish ambitions, nor to indulge in 
malignant hatreds, in bestial convivialities, in unchaste con 
nections. 

Addison was true, kind, open, honest, unrevengeful, chaste, 
and, as one may charitably hope, only a moderate drinker. 
It is also true that in his essays he never pandered to the 
vices of the times, although he knew that by so doing his 
writings would meet with higher favor in the aristocratic 



JOSEPH ADDISO]^. 15 



circles, in which alone he could expect to find jiatrons. On 
the contrary, he made his essays tributary both to virtue and 
religion. Most surely these facts prove the great strength 
of his character and of his loyalty to \ irtuous principles. 

His religious character, judged by strictly evangelical 
standards, is somewhat problematical. That he had relig- 
ious convictions, that he loved religious truth, that he had 
some religious experiences, his early poems and his later essays 
abundantly prove. But he was a habitue of the theater; a 
writer of plays; and a voluntary companion of very worldly 
men. It is difticult to harmonize these practices with genu- 
ine piety. It is equally difticult to believe that his bold 
advocacy of religious truth and his many virtues had no 
roots in his spiritual affections. Perhaps these contradictions 
grew^ out of his apparently incorrect views of the scriptural 
theory of salvation by faith only. He does indeed recognize 
the need of trust in the divine Goodness ; and he occasionally 
recognizes the Chri>t as man's Redeemer; but he associates 
repentance with trust in such a way as to imply that it is in 
some way meritoriously related to the pardon of sin. Per- 
liaps his imperfect theories and the notoriously anti-evangel- 
ical, not to say anti-Christian, character of his times are 
responsible for his indulgences in practices which with 
clearer light he would have rejected as inconsistent with 
spiritual religion. One is, therefore, disposed to throw the 
mantle of charity over his faults, and to hope that in his 
last years of suffering and of repentance he sought and 
found clearer light, and complete redemption from all his 
sins in that precious blood of the Christ which cleanses the 
soul from all sin. 



16 JOSEPH ADDISON. 



INSPIRED AND UNINSPIRED THOUGHTS. 

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is 
full of his glory. — Isaiah, 

What man can think of himself as called out and separated 
from nothing, of his being made a conscious, a reasonable, 
a happy creature, in short as being taken in as a sharer of I 
existence and a kind of partner in eternity, without being 
swallowed up in wonder, in ])raise, in adoration! It is indeed 
a thought too big for the mind of men, and rather to be en- 
tertained in the secrecy of devotion and in the silence of the 
soul, than to be expressed in words. The Supreme Being | 
has not given us powers or faculties sufficient to extol or 
magnify such unutterable goodness." — Addison in Spectator. . 

The fool hath said in his heart there is no God. — David. 

There is not a more ridiculous animal than an atheist in 
retirement. His mind is incapable of rapture or elevation; 
he can only consider himself as an insignificant figure in a 
landscape, and wandering up and down in a field or a 
meadow, under the same terms as the meanest animals about 
him, and as subject to as total a mortality as they, with this 
aggravation, that he is the only one among them who lies 
under the apprehension of it. — Addison in the Tatler. 

Knowledge is, indeed, that which next to virtue truly and 
essentially raises one man above another. It finishes one 
half of the human soul. It makes being pleasant to us, fills 
the mind with entertaining views, and administers to it a 
perpetual series of gratifications. It gives ease to solitude, 
and gracefulness to retirement. — Addison in the Guardian. 



[thought outline to help the memory.] 

1. Birth? Father? At twelve years? The "barring out?" Another tradi- 

tion? Charter House School? Oxford? Latin verses and the " Demy ? " 
1693? Knowledge of Greek { His special gift ? 

2. Abroad? Why? Advantages? Trouble? A poem and a new office? 

" Travels in Italy ? " " Eosamond ? " 

3. Under-Secretary of State? House of Commons? As an orator? Visit to 

Ireland? Financial disaster ? How he bore it? 

4. New rkjime and prosperity? Marriage? Trouble? Promotion? Lady 

Montagu to Pope about Addison ? Retirement ? 

5. Addison's real power? "Tatler," "Spectator," "Guardian?" Secret of 

charm in Addison's essays? " Ethical value ? " As a " poet? " 

6. Visit of " Gay ? " Words to " Lord Warwick? " Death? General char- 

acter ? Faults ? Religious views and life ? 



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